


What You Don't Know (CAN Hurt You)

by IronWoman359



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders Angst, Gen, In which Patton represses everything, Janus is Very Tired, Morality | Patton Sanders Angst, and Janus tries to hold everything together, as a treat, this is a patton and janus fic but roman gets some angst too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:33:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29270322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronWoman359/pseuds/IronWoman359
Summary: Patton doesn’t always know what the right thing to do is, and not knowing has its own...unique effect on him. Janus has been quietly by his side for most of Thomas’s life, making sure that nobody finds out just how fragile their morality actually is. But how long can they keep this deception going before it collapses around them?
Relationships: Deceit | Janus Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders
Comments: 8
Kudos: 75





	What You Don't Know (CAN Hurt You)

Of all the sides in the mindscape, Janus knew how to impersonate Patton best. Now, this was not because Patton was the most convenient for Janus to impersonate, nor was it because Patton was the most like himself and therefore the easiest to imitate. If he wanted to impersonate a side for his own agenda, he would have been just as likely to choose Logan or Roman as he was Patton, and Virgil took the medal for being the easiest to imitate on a whim. No, Janus was best at impersonating Patton because, quite simply, he did it the most often. 

He had every mannerism down, every tiny shift in tone of voice perfected, and why shouldn’t he? He’d pretended to be Patton so many times at this point that he might as well be partly responsible for Morality himself. And _not_ because he was trying to influence Thomas’s decisions for his own nefarious purposes, thank you very much. The reason he impersonated Patton was far simpler than that...Patton had asked him to. 

Well, not the first time. The first time, when Thomas was in highschool, Janus had found Patton slumped against the kitchen cabinets well past midnight, muttering nonsense to himself and giggling. He didn’t seem to notice Janus's approach, and jolted in surprise when Janus waved his hand in front of his eyes.

“Oh! Deceit! Fancy ssseein’you here,” he slurred, then he giggled again. “Sssssssss...like you…..ya know, cuz you’re a snake?” 

“...Indeed,” Janus said, frowning. It wasn’t unlike Patton to make a pun or joke about any of the others, but the moral side usually wasn’t comfortable enough around Janus to make those kinds of jokes with him. Janus didn’t blame him for it, their purposes were, after all, more than a little bit at odds. Still, the sudden shift in attitude plus his overall demeanor was more than enough to cause Janus concern. 

“So...what are you doing?” Janus asked cautiously.

“Oh…” Patton frowned, and looked around the kitchen. “I don’t know, actually, I…” his eyes widened, and he looked up at Janus with a wobbling lip. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Dee, what am I doing?” 

Janus winced. Oh, he was _so_ not equipped for this. But he was the only one here, and like him or no, Janus couldn’t just leave Patton babbling to himself alone in the kitchen. 

“Is this about what happened at school today?” he asked, and Patton nodded so fast it was a wonder he didn’t sprain his neck. 

“I’m _morality_ , I...I know that telling the teacher about what was going on was the right thing, but...but Annie looked so _hurt!_ Why did the right thing make us feel so _bad???”_

Janus fought the urge to curse under his breath. This is what Thomas got for tying emotions and morals so closely together in his mind. No wonder Patton was so confused, the two parts of himself were essentially at war. He was about to launch into an explanation of why sometimes being honest with authority was _not_ the best course of action, when a voice cut through the silence of the commons.

“Patton?” 

Patton’s head snapped up at the sound of Logan’s voice calling from the stairs, and he gave Janus such a panicked look that Janus didn’t even think twice before calling back, “What, Lo?” in a perfect impression of Patton’s voice. Patton stared at him in wonder, opening his mouth as if to say something, but Janus pressed a finger to his lips and Patton’s own hand came up to cover his mouth. 

“Is everything alright down there?” 

“Just getting a late night snack, Logan.” The lie slid easily from Janus’s tongue, and he heard Logan give a resigned sigh.

“Very well, please remember not to eat too much sugar before bed, it’s very bad for your metabolism.” 

“I won’t, Lo, go to sleep!” Janus punctured the statement with a giggle, and that was apparently enough for Logan to leave well enough alone. The sound of his receding footsteps filled the commons, and Janus turned back to Patton, snapping his fingers and allowing Patton’s hand to fall away from his mouth. 

“They can’t know,” Patton whispered. “They can’t know that I get like this, they can’t know that I...that I don’t know what to _do.”_

“Why?” Janus asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“I’m _morality!”_ Patton hissed, his face suddenly twisting from forlorn to furious. “I’m the one they look to to make sure everything’s okay! Everything has to be okay! Do you _see?_ ” His face twisted again, his eyes lighting up and a giggle bubbling out of him. “Sssssssseee?” he asked, sticking his tongue out, and Janus sighed. 

“Yes, Patton, I see.” 

“That’s why they can’t find out,” Patton continued. “They can’t know, they can’t, you can’t let them find out, Deceit, please don’t let them find out.” 

Patton stared up at him, and Janus bit his lip.

Hopefully by morning, Patton would be back to his regular self. Thomas was, after all, a teenager. He’d be easily distracted by some new problem tomorrow, and whatever concern over this dilemma that remained would most likely be relegated to Virgil’s territory. 

What was _concerning_ was that if the conflicting emotions Patton felt over simply telling on a friend at school had him _this_ out of sorts, then what sort of effects would a more serious moral dilemma have on him? 

Janus sighed and took off his hat, running a hand through his hair. Really what he ought to do was tell one of the others about this; Logan, maybe, or perhaps Roman. They were Patton’s friends, they would know how to help him. But Patton’s words echoed through his mind, tugging on something deep inside him. 

_Don’t let them find out._

Janus grit his teeth. Sometimes, he hated being the one in charge of keeping secrets. Thomas was a teenager; he had _so many_ to keep track of, and it would be so much better if he just was _open_ with himself, but that wasn’t Janus’s call to make. If it was repression that Patton wanted, that _Thomas_ wanted, then it was repression that Janus had to give them.

“Come on, Patton,” he said, pulling the moral side to his feet. “Let’s get you to bed.” 

Janus helped Patton up the stairs and into bed, then sunk away to his own room as soon as he was sure Patton wouldn’t try to get back up again. He stood in front of his full-length mirror and frowned at his reflection. The soft light from his bedside lamp glinted off his scales, and cast the human side of his face into shadow. He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. 

When he opened them again, the scales were gone, replaced by smooth, unblemished skin. Both his eyes were a soft brown, rimmed by familiar black rimmed glasses, and his capelet was swapped out for a bright blue polo and a cardigan around his shoulders. 

Patton stared back at him from the mirror, and Janus nodded to himself. If a strong, put together Patton was the lie that Thomas was going to tell himself, then that was the lie that Janus would sell him. 

After all, this was most likely just a phase. Patton would grow out of it eventually, then Janus could go back to just being Janus. 

* * *

Nearly fifteen years later, Janus wished he could shake his younger self by the shoulders and scream at him to get Patton to just own up to what was happening. Rather than grow out of his conflicting nature, Patton had only grown into it _more_ , repressing not just his own conflicting duality, but _everything_ he didn’t like about himself, _and_ that he didn’t like about Thomas. 

The Others complained about it constantly, but Janus could only do so much about it from his own hidden position. His one attempt to use his ability to impersonate Patton to try and actually influence Thomas had gone just about as poorly as it could have. As it turned out, he could impersonate Patton well enough to get the others to leave him alone until Patton himself was ready to emerge from his room again, but _not quite_ well enough to fool them for an entire video. And now Thomas _knew_ about him, which on one hand could be a good thing, but on the other hand, meant that all of a sudden he was on the _lookout_ for him. 

That wouldn’t even be such a problem if Patton had kept himself relatively together throughout the whole thing, but Janus’s reveal to Thomas seemed to only further agitate the moral side’s drive to make sure that he was always in the right. It had been a fair amount of time since...an _incident_ , but Janus knew that it was only a matter of time now before the whole situation collapsed around his ears.

Perhaps if he were a more patient side, he would have been able to back off until everything cooled down, but he was _so close_ to making Thomas realize that the world around him wasn’t as black and white as it seemed. He just needed a _little_ bit more pushing.

So Janus pushed. 

He pushed them all into a courtroom when the callback of a lifetime came on the date of Lee and Mary Lee’s wedding, all the while watching Patton out of the corner of his eye. Patton was holding himself together surprisingly well at first, perhaps because this particular want came more from Roman’s domain than his, but Janus could tell that Patton felt that want just as keenly, and that it was killing him inside to want something he thought was wrong. As soon as the courtroom fell apart and everyone sunk away, Janus slipped into Patton’s room, and sure enough, found him sitting criss-cross-applesauce against the wall and staring up at the ceiling. 

“If we keep meeting like this, people will Talk, you know,” Janus said, folding his arms and raising an eyebrow. 

Patton blinked slowly and looked up at him, then giggled and shook his head. 

“Nnnnooo…..no no no. They won’t. ‘Cus _you_ are so good at your job, ya’know?” He sighed, and let his head tilt to the side, resting it on his fist. “Wonder what thas’like…” 

“You serve your purpose just as well as I do,” Janus said, frowning, but Patton shook his head again, wagging a finger back and forth like he was scolding a child. 

“Nope. Nope, I don’t, ‘cus every time I dunno what to do, _this_ happens and you hafta come in and save me.” 

Janus winced. He tried to come up with a reply, but if there was one thing Patton was good at when he got like this, it was being so frank that Janus didn’t know how to respond. 

“Ya’know what’s funny?” Patton continued absentmindedly. “This time, I’m not even sure _what_ Thomas wants. What’m I ‘sposed to do if I don’t know what he wants?” 

“That isn’t your problem to worry about, Patton.”

“Liar liar,” Patton mumbled, and Janus sighed. Technically it _wasn’t_ Patton’s problem...it was _Roman’s_ problem, which was being _exacerbated_ by Patton, but arguing semantics was the last thing he wanted to do when Patton could barely keep the room in focus. 

Patton’s meaning was painfully clear either way. He still blamed himself for what happened. And as long as he kept doing that, Janus’s job was going to stay stupidly complicated. 

“Alright, St. Stephen,” Janus muttered, taking Patton by the arm. “To bed, now.”

Patton went with little resistance, and Janus let his familiar morality disguise fall into place before selecting one of Patton’s many bean bag chairs to sit down in. With a snap of his fingers, a book from his own room appeared in his hands, and he settled in to wait for Patton to wake up. 

Janus had learned a long time ago that the best way to hide Patton’s… _condition_ from the others was to keep watch over the moral side’s room and to play the role of Happy Pappy Patton if any of the others came calling. Which he seriously hoped they didn’t today; after the disaster that was the courtroom scenario, Janus didn’t particularly want to speak to any of the other sides. 

Janus should have known that, after everything else that had gone wrong that day, he would have no such luck. 

“Patton?” an all too familiar voice called, accompanied by a knock at the door. Janus sighed and waved his hand, concealing Patton’s sleeping form from view before getting up and opening the door. 

“Yeah, kiddo?” he asked, cringing internally when he saw Roman at the door. If there was anyone who Janus did _not_ need to see right now, it was the penancing prince. 

“I just...I wanted to ask you…” Roman looked down for a moment, then took a deep breath and met Janus’s eyes. “Did we _really_ do the right thing today?” 

_Goddammit_. 

“It...can be hard to say for sure,” Janus said, giving Roman his best sympathetic smile. “But I _do_ think that yes...we’re doing the right thing here. Not that Thomas’s dreams and aspirations aren’t important! But you...you were right, about what you said earlier. Getting those things through deceit...just isn’t who Thomas is.” 

“Yeah…yeah,” Roman said, smiling a bit. “You’re right, I’m sure you’re right. I think I just...needed to hear that again.” 

“Well, you know I’m always here for you, Kiddo!” Janus said, grinning as wide as his cheeks would allow. “But I think right now, you should get some rest.”

“Thanks, Padre. I suppose after today, we all could use a little R&R. I shall be certain to give myself a sufficient break!” 

The scent of Roman’s lie hung thick in the air, but Janus didn’t dare call him out on it while in this form. 

“Sounds good, Roman!” he said instead, waving cheerfully as Roman headed down the hall back to his own room. He waited until he heard Roman’s door click shut before stepping back into Patton’s room and collapsing back into his bean bag. 

This couldn’t continue. Between Patton’s repression, Roman’s damaged ego, and Thomas’s inability to even take care of himself properly, they were all going to crash and burn before Thomas got _anything_ he wanted. 

Things had to change. And because no one else would even admit there was a problem at all, it was up to Janus to change them. 

* * *

The wedding went about as poorly as Janus expected it to. Nobody enjoyed themselves, not even Patton, who had fought harder for this choice than anything he’d fought for in awhile. Janus stood back and watched them all argue for as long as he could bear it, but eventually, he couldn’t hold back anymore. 

It was a simple matter to take Logan’s place, the others practically giftwrapped the opportunity for him. He was _hoping_ that he could make his thoughts known through the “lowdown” system that Logan had already come up with, and no one would be the wiser that Logan was actually back in his room, temporarily silenced. 

And then Patton turned into a frog. 

Janus had to admit, he hadn’t been expecting that. 

If he had time to theorize about what happened, he’d probably guess that it was a typical Patton breakdown situation, but because they’d all been so wrapped up in the video game framework they’d been using that it manifested differently. Maybe the fact that Patton had gotten so heated in the argument had something to do with it too, Janus couldn’t say. It honestly wasn’t that important. 

What was _important_ was that this had officially gone so far that Janus’s own roles of self preservation and deception were now at odds. What Thomas didn’t know was hurting him too much for Janus to justify hiding any longer; the deception had to end. 

It took a lot more unmasking, both literal and figurative, than Janus had been expecting, and he had a feeling that the look on Roman’s face right before sinking out was going to stick in his mind for awhile, but as he and Patton stood in the corner, watching Thomas make brunch with Lee and Mary Lee, he decided to focus on one thing at a time. 

“So...are you going to tell them, or am I?” 

Patton frowned, looking over at him. 

“Tell them?” 

“The other sides? About our little arrangement? It’s _totally_ something you can just keep hiding from them after everything that’s happened.” 

“Oh. I guess...I guess I should probably let them know, shouldn’t I?” Patton bit his lip and looked away, and Janus sighed. 

“Look at it this way. You always were afraid they’d find out because you didn’t want to admit you didn’t have all the answers, right?” Patton nodded, so Janus continued, “You’ve done that already. That was the most important step. The whole ‘getting loopy when you’re indecisive’ thing is secondary to the real issue. Not to mention _way_ more palatable than turning into a giant frog monster in the living room.” 

“I suppose so.” Patton paused, then took a deep breath. “Janus?” 

Janus forced himself not to react with too much shock. It’d barely been two weeks since he revealed his name, and he still wasn’t used to the way it sounded in Patton’s voice. 

“Yes, Patton?”

“Would...would be there with me? When I tell them?” 

“Are you certain that’s what you want?” Janus asked, raising an eyebrow. “I’m _so_ sure my presence would be appreciated by the others.” 

“Well, it’d be appreciated by me,” Patton said, smiling slightly. “You’ve been there for me all these years, and they haven’t even known it. I’d...I’d like for you to be there now. If that’s alright with you, of course!” 

“I…” Janus paused, taking in Patton’s plaintively hopeful face. “I suppose I can. On one condition.” 

“Name it!” Patton said instantly, and Janus snorted. 

“Don’t be so eager, you haven’t even heard what I’m going to say.” 

“Haha, yeah, I guess you’re right,” Patton said sheepishly. “But it’s okay, I trust you!” 

Janus blinked, then smirked. 

“A terrible decision, really.”

“It’s _nooot!”_ Patton insisted, nudging him on the arm. “But seriously, what’s your condition?” 

Janus took a deep breath. 

“No more hiding. After today, if you’re feeling conflicted, you get one of the others to work you through those feelings. No more hiding away and putting on a mask.” 

Patton nodded. 

“You’re right…it’s not good for me to repress so much.”

“You’ve only been at it for half of Thomas’s life, it’s not _that_ bad,” Janus said dryly, and Patton laughed. 

“Okay, okay, I get it. And...Janus?”

“Yes, Patton?” 

“Thank you. For everything.” 

Janus wasn’t sure what was going to happen in the future. Thomas knew his name now, and was willing to listen to him perhaps a little bit more. On the other hand, Roman hated him more than ever, and it wouldn’t be long before the damaged ego became a serious problem that they’d all have to deal with. But right in this moment, looking at Patton’s smiling, open face, he found it impossible not to be at least a little optimistic. If the two of them could work together...maybe they could make Thomas truly happy.

“You’re very welcome, Patton. You’re very welcome.”


End file.
